Reader Mail: Pimped out cop cars

Hoboken411 reader “nacholibre” was curious about one particular police vehicle today. I happened to see the same SUV and snapped this pic during my afternoon walk around town…

What’s with the plate cover?

“Here is something interesting I noticed. Today I was behind the black HPD Jeep Liberty #145. I thought something looked odd, and I realized it was the tinted license plate cover on the back tag.

Not sure why HPD (or anyone for that matter) feels the need to cover up and obscure their tag, but it is a violation of the vehicle code: “No frames or covers can obscure any letters on a New Jersey license plate.”

Even if it only cost $10 at AutoZone, it seems pretty ridiculous to be pimping police rides.”

Sure, not the biggest of our problems, but is this just another example of Hoboken waste?

eh–can you tell I don’t drive and don’t really pay much attention to this stuff? I thought the cameras just got the lower part of the car (never seen a picture from a traffic camera). I’ve just read about the many ways to block the camera from developing a clear picture.

[quote comment=”106379″][quote comment=”106362″]Like escaped68 said, those covers serve a purpose–to evade the cameras at traffic lights so when a picture is taken of someone running the light, it’s unable to read the plate number. An interesting thing to have on a police car…….[/quote]

Yeah that’s a great theory until you see that large “145” on the rear of the truck.[/quote]

I doubt that they are busting the tolls or traffic cameras (the large reflective graphics tend to defeat stealth mode), the only point of my observation was it was ODD and somewhat funny.

FYI, I spent 10 years as a police officer and am not one of the people that thinks it is a crime if cops grab a cup of coffee, don’t hand out customer satisfaction surveys to people they arrest or shoot the breeze with someone for a few when not humping calls. 😯

If you want to beat the tolls get 1 of those flip up lic plate brackets. They caught a truck doing this last week and the best thing is the authoritys don’t know how long he was doing this, no cheap plate cover for him.